Digital Tool, Development, Website Development

Sheffield Safety Plan.

The Sheffield Safety Plan is a tool created by Sheffield Flourish and the NHS, to help people who have ever experienced suicidal thoughts. The purpose of the plan is to help individuals and their support networks respond effectively when in need.

Client: Sheffield Flourish
Who they are: A local mental health charity deeply connected to the Sheffield community. They run a large directory for mental health services and activities and believe in empowering people to use their skills, ideas and talents to shape fulfilling lives. We have worked to support four of their websites: Sheffield Flourish, Sheffield Mental Health Guide, MyToolkit and Sheffield Suicide Support.
What they do: They work to support those affected by mental health challenges by connecting them with helpful resources and services to give them a sense of belonging. Their projects include tools and directories aimed at improving mental well-being, offering vital support to individuals in need.
Location: Sheffield
Requirements: Create a Sheffield-centric digital safety plan tool to help people, who have experienced suicidal thoughts, to be prepared with a plan to stay safe in times of crisis

problem

Stakeholders: NHS Sheffield, Sheffield Flourish and Sheffield City Council identified a need for a Sheffield-focused digital Safety Plan tool. This is so that healthcare professionals, people experiencing suicidal thoughts and those supporting them in any capacity are familiar with the plan and can therefore act quickly when using it. Existing safety plans were often static and didn’t allow for customisation. Flourish wanted to overcome these challenges by creating a digital version that was secure, confidential and easy to use, all whilst seamlessly integrating with their existing Sheffield Suicide Support website.

result

We developed a dedicated microsite for the Safety Plan, accessible via the Sheffield Suicide Support website. The result is a mobile-first and user-friendly platform where users can log in, edit or access their personalised safety plan at any time. The people who use this platform can share their plan via email, download it to keep it safe on their device and print their safety plan to share a paper copy with their support network, or healthcare professionals. Users can also print out a blank safety plan if they prefer to fill it out by hand.

Working with Hive on the Sheffield Digital Safety Plan was a fantastic experience. They were highly responsive, turning our ideas into a user-friendly and empowering tool. Their support went beyond development as they actively participated in the launch event, showing real commitment to making a difference. Thanks to their expertise, we now have a safety plan that will be flexible to meet the needs of local people

Jo, Sheffield City Council

Branding and Design

Our design team ensured that the Safety Plan felt like an extension of Sheffield Suicide Support’s existing site. We crafted three key visual designs, which were

The initial ‘welcome’ screen
The form for creating and editing a safety plan
The confirmation screen
The account screen

Each step was reviewed and adapted based on feedback from Sheffield Flourish and its stakeholders.

Development

We worked closely with Sheffield Flourish, conducting workshops to make sure we had all the necessary information and requirements to create the digital tool. The microsite was developed as a subdomain of the Sheffield Suicide Support website.

A prominent menu link ensures the Safety Plan is easy to find for individuals who may be in search of these services. We created the tool so that the microsite integrates seamlessly with the parent site whilst maintaining the unique identity of the Safety Plan.

Technology

We used the following tools and technologies during development:

React, Next.js - Frontend
Postgres, Prisma - Database, ORM
TypeScript - Languages
Vercel - Hosting
Authentication - Auth0
GitLab - CI/CD pipeline

In the creation and development of this tool, data security and usability were important to Sheffield Flourish.

The security of users' data and information which they choose to input in their Safety Plan had to be secure, with measures in place to ensure personal data protection and security.

To meet these goals we implemented the following

Hosting and data security

We opted to use Vercel to host our website and database deployments because Flourish’s other project Sheffield Mental Health Guide is already hosted there, this allowed us to use more of their existing allowances with the service to help keep running costs down. As the site was built with Next.js, created by Vercel, making deployment simple frees up more budget for development. Vercel complies with UK GDPR data protection law, ensuring the data will be processed securely.

Authentication

For user authentication, we use Auth0 which gives the tool a secure and seamless login experience, this means we do not handle any user account data ourselves. Auth0 is a 3rd party SaaS that complies with GDPR data protection law, making them our data processor for our user account data.

Data Privacy

We never directly ask users for personally identifiable data. We have designed features in such a way that allows users to have as minimal of a data footprint as possible; users aren’t forced to create an account to use the tool and any plans created by anonymous users are only temporarily stored for up to 14 days. As for users with accounts, through a few simple navigations, users can find options to reset their account, which would remove all their plan data but they would keep their account, or to completely delete their account.

Collaboration and Testing

Getting the Safety Plan to those in need quickly was our main objective; we had to give the Sheffield community a tool they could recognise as their own. Since the design of the form and questions were already successful in different organisations, we did not have to start from scratch and in other words, ‘reinvent the wheel’.

Before diving into development, we held several discovery sessions with Sheffield Flourish, the NHS and Sheffield City Council. We discovered their needs by gently prompting users to create an account and ensuring it was simple for users to delete their plans if needed. We needed to ensure that we had a deep understanding of what they wanted to achieve with the platform.

After completing the majority of the build, we worked with our QA (Quality Assurance Tester) on a walkthrough of the site map, reviewing user journeys and testing against our expected user stories. This ensured that we could fix any bugs or incorrect features that may appear in the testing. Having done this, we had every confidence in submitting the project to user testing, which led to a slick and quick user acceptance testing phase.

Our main goal was to get something useful to the people who need it most, as soon as possible. We’re planning further user testing to gather more insights that will help us make the platform even more accessible, easier to navigate and supportive in its language. Most importantly, we want the users of this Safety plan to feel seen, heard and comfortable when using the platform.

It was a truly invaluable experience being able to sit down with our stakeholders from the NHS, Sheffield City Council and Flourish at the start of the project to understand the problem that we were trying to solve collectively by developing the Safety Plan. Between them, their experience with suicide in Sheffield was sadly extensive, but their advice kept us grounded and focused on the end users, allowing us to create a platform that does what the community needs it to do.

What's next?

We hope to work with Flourish, the NHS and the SCC in the near future to conduct user research to improve the Safety Plan so that it can help even more people in Sheffield stay safe from suicide.

Conclusion

The Sheffield Safety Plan is a vital tool for the Sheffield community. By helping bridge the gap between paper-based plans and digital accessibility, the microsite empowers individuals to take control of their mental health. This tool will also offer healthcare providers and support networks an essential resource. You can access the Safety Plan directly via the link above or through the https://www.sheffieldsuicidesupport.co.uk/ website.

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